Kafka on the Shore

With Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami gives us a novel every bit as ambitious and expansive as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which has been acclaimed both here and around the world for its uncommon ambition and achievement, and whose still-growing popularity suggests that it will be read and admired for decades to come.

South of the Border, West of the Sun: A Novel

Born in 1951 in an affluent Tokyo suburb, Hajime - beginning in Japanese - has arrived at middle age wanting for almost nothing. The postwar years have brought him a fine marriage, two daughters, and an enviable career as the proprietor of two jazz clubs. Yet a nagging sense of inauthenticity about his success threatens Hajime's happiness. And a boyhood memory of a wise, lonely girl named Shimamoto clouds his heart.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: A Novel

In a Tokyo suburb a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife's missing cat.... Soon he finds himself looking for his wife as well in a netherworld that lies beneath the placid surface of Tokyo. As these searches intersect, Okada encounters a bizarre group of allies and antagonists: a psychic prostitute; a malevolent yet mediagenic politician; a cheerfully morbid 16-year-old-girl; and an aging war veteran who has been permanently changed by the hideous things he witnessed during Japan's forgotten campaign in Manchuria.

A young woman named Aomame follows a taxi driver's enigmatic suggestion and begins to notice puzzling discrepancies in the world around her. She has entered, she realizes, a parallel existence, which she calls 1Q84 - "Q" is for "question mark". A world that bears a question....

Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Information is everything in Hard-boiled Wonderland. A specialist encrypter is attacked by thugs with orders from an unknown source, is chased by invisible predators, and dates an insatiably hungry librarian who never puts on weight. In the End of the World a new arrival is learning his role as dream-reader. But there is something eerily disquieting about the changeless nature of the town and its fable-like inhabitants.

A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel

A marvelous hybrid of mythology and mystery, A Wild Sheep Chase is the extraordinary literary thriller that launched Haruki Murakami's international reputation.

It begins simply enough: A 20-something advertising executive receives a postcard from a friend, and casually appropriates the image for an insurance company's advertisement. What he doesn't realize is that included in the pastoral scene is a mutant sheep with a star on its back, and in using this photo he has unwittingly captured the attention of a man in black who offers a menacing ultimatum: Find the sheep or face dire consequences.

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and his Years of Pilgrimage

The new novel - a book that sold more than a million copies the first week it went on sale in Japan - from the internationally acclaimed author, his first since IQ84. Here he gives us the remarkable story of Tsukuru Tazaki, a young man haunted by a great loss; of dreams and nightmares that have unintended consequences for the world around us; and of a journey into the past that is necessary to mend the present. It is a story of love, friendship, and heartbreak for the ages.

Sputnik Sweetheart

Haruki Murakami, the internationally best-selling author of Norwegian Wood and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, plunges us into an urbane Japan of jazz bars, coffee shops, Jack Kerouac, and the Beatles to tell this story of a tangled triangle of uniquely unrequited loves.

>A college student, identified only as "K" falls in love with his classmate, Sumire. But devotion to an untidy writerly life precludes her from any personal commitments until she meets Miu, an older and much more sophisticated businesswoman.

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

From the surreal to the mundane, these stories exhibit his ability to transform the full range of human experience in ways that are instructive, surprising, and relentlessly entertaining. Here are animated crows, a criminal monkey, and an iceman, as well as the dreams that shape us and the things we might wish for. Whether during a chance reunion in Italy, a romantic exile in Greece, a holiday in Hawaii, or in the grip of everyday life, Murakami's characters confront grievous loss, or sexuality, or the glow of a firefly, or the impossible distances between those who ought to be closest of all.

Maggie McMeekin says:"Fantastic, just like how all Murakami books are"

After Dark

Here is a short, sleek novel of encounters, set in Tokyo during the witching hours between midnight and dawn, and every bit as gripping as Haruki Murakami's masterworks The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Kafka on the Shore. At its center are two sisters: Eri, a fashion model slumbering her way into oblivion, and Mari, a young student soon led from solitary reading at an anonymous Denny's toward people whose lives are radically different from her own.

Wind/Pinball: Two Novels

In the spring of 1978, a young Haruki Murakami sat down at his kitchen table and began to write. The result: two remarkable short novels - Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973 - that launched the career of one of the most acclaimed authors of our time.

With the same deadpan mania and genius for dislocation that he brought to his internationally acclaimed novels A Wild Sheep Chase and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, Haruki Murakami makes this collection of stories a determined assault on the normal. A man sees his favorite elephant vanish into thin air; a newlywed couple suffers attacks of hunger that drive them to hold up a McDonald's in the middle of the night; and a young woman discovers that she has become irresistible to a little green monster who burrows up through her backyard.

Hear the Wind Sing

Hear the Wind Sing is the first novel by Haruki Murakami. First published in the June 1979 issue of Gunzo, one of the most influential literary magazines in Japan, it was published one month later as a book. Hear the Wind Sing is the first book in the Trilogy of the Rat, a series of independent novels that include Pinball, 1973 and A Wild Sheep Chase, followed by the epilogue Dance Dance Dance.

What I Talk about When I Talk about Running: A Memoir

From the best-selling author of Kafka on the Shore comes this rich and revelatory memoir about writing and running and the integral impact both have made on his life. Equal parts training log, travelogue, and reminiscence, this revealing memoir covers Murakami's four-month preparation for the 2005 New York City Marathon. Settings range from Tokyo, where he once shared the course with an Olympian, to the Charles River in Boston, among young women who outpace him.

Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche

From Haruki Murakami, internationally acclaimed author of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Norwegian Wood, a work of literary journalism that is as fascinating as it is necessary, as provocative as it is profound.

Lolita

Why we think it’s a great listen: Among the great literary achievements of the 20th century, Lolita soars in audio thanks to the incomparable Jeremy Irons, bringing to life Nabokov’s ability to shock and enthrall more than 50 years after publication. Lolita became a cause celebre because of the erotic predilections of its protagonist. But Nabokov's masterpiece owes its stature not to the controversy its material aroused but to its author's use of that material to tell a love story that is shocking in its beauty and tenderness.

Pinball, 1973

Published in 1980 by Japanese author Haruki Murakami, Pinball, 1973 is the second book in the Trilogy of the Rat series. It is preceded by Hear the Wind Sing (1979) and followed by A Wild Sheep Chase (1982) and is the second novel written by Murakami.

Journey to the End of the Night

Louis-Ferdinand Celine's revulsion and anger at what he considered the idiocy and hypocrisy of society explodes from nearly every minute of this novel. Filled with slang and obscenities and written in raw, colloquial language, Journey to the End of the Night is a literary symphony of violence, cruelty, and obscene nihilism. This book shocked most critics when it was first published in France in 1932, but quickly became a success with the public in Europe, and later in America.

After the Quake: Stories

The six stories in Haruki Murakami’s mesmerizing collection are set at the time of the catastrophic 1995 Kobe earthquake, when Japan became brutally aware of the fragility of its daily existence. But the upheavals that afflict Murakami’s characters are even deeper and more mysterious, emanating from a place where the human meets the inhuman.

The Strange Library

From internationally acclaimed author Haruki Murakami - a fantastical short novel about a boy imprisoned in a nightmarish library. A lonely boy, a mysterious girl, and a tormented sheep man plot their escape from the nightmarish library of internationally acclaimed, best-selling Haruki Murakami's wild imagination.

Zero K

Jeffrey Lockhart's father, Ross, is a billionaire in his 60s with a younger wife, Artis Martineau, whose health is failing. Ross is the primary investor in a remote and secret compound where death is exquisitely controlled and bodies are preserved until a future time when biomedical advances and new technologies can return them to lives of transcendent promise. Jeff joins Ross and Artis at the compound to say "an uncertain farewell" to her as she surrenders her body.

Bad Behavior: Stories

This is a reissue of National Book Award finalist Mary Gaitskill's debut collection, Bad Behavior - powerful stories about dislocation, longing, and desire that depict a disenchanted and rebellious urban-fringe generation as it searches for human connection. Now a classic, Bad Behavior made critical waves when it was first published, heralding Gaitskill's arrival on the literary scene and her establishment as a sharp, erotically charged, and audaciously funny writer of contemporary literature.

2666

Composed in the last years of Roberto Bolaño's life, 2666 was greeted across Europe and Latin America as his highest achievement, surpassing even his previous work in its strangeness, beauty, and scope. Its throng of unforgettable characters includes academics and convicts, an American sportswriter, an elusive German novelist, and a teenage student and her widowed, mentally unstable father. Their lives intersect in the urban sprawl of Santa Teresa - a fictional Juárez - on the U.S.-Mexico border.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being: A Novel

A young woman is in love with a successful surgeon, a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing. His mistress, a free-spirited artist, lives her life as a series of betrayals—while her other lover, earnest, faithful, and good, stands to lose everything because of his noble qualities. In a world where lives are shaped by irrevocable choices and fortuitous events, and everything occurs but once, existence seems to lose its substance, its weight. Hence we feel “the unbearable lightness of being."

Publisher's Summary

Toru Watanabe, approaching middle age, hears The Beatles song "Norwegian Wood" in an airplane and, with Proustian vividness, it transports him back to his student days in Japan with Naoko, Midori, and Storm Trooper.

Like all of Murakimi's works this is a book you never want to put down. It's not so much the story itself, which is as wonderful and unexpected as always, but the pleasure of spending time in Murakami's world and being able to see through his eyes. He has an almost magical ability to make anything he describes fascinating, touching and deeply enlightening.

My only minor quibble was that although the reader was perfectly good the book would have deserved much better narration, with clearer dramatic personification of the individual characters. This really isn't a criticism of this reader, I've just been spoiled recently by truly superlative readers like Simon Prebble.

I saw the movie version last weekend and really liked it. Discussed it a lot with my regular cinema buddy. But I'm really glad I bought this audiobook. It's so much deeper. And what a great description of the late 60's in Japan.
And the way the protagonist uses senses to evoke memories, just amazing!
It's deeply felt, but not too sentimental.
I know I'm gushing, but this book really touched me.
Loved how each chapter had a musical interlude.
Highly recommended.

Norwegian Wood is the second Murakami book I have enjoyed (the first being Kafka on the Shore). While I marginally preferred "Kafka" this one was well worth listening to. Both books intersperse relative normality with weirdness, tending to involve introspective characters, music and dreams, lust and romance, forests and cityscapes. When you need a break from thrillers, biographies, politics and comedy, Murakami's works provide a welcome change of landscape and pace. My advice, though, is to absorb his works slowly, with long intervals between, to avoid them cloying. The narrator, John Chancer, suits the book exactly.

I'm not sure how I stumbled into Murakami - I think it was on the basis of a review or mention in the New Yorker magazine - and a quick look through the available titles on Audible. Having listened to Norwegian Wood I saw the recent BBC Imagine programme where the author refused to appear in person and his readers seemed strangely reluctant to break ranks and give their impressions of the books - other than to say they had established a personal relationship through reading and did not want to betray the 'trust' placed in them. Odd, odd, very odd. The website with its moody based doesn't seem to clear anything up - but it is the beauty and clarity of the prose that has captured me and seems to have entranced others around the world. Give it a try, get on board - you'll really enjoy the experience. The picture of Japan is bang up to date - it is the authentic voice of new Japan - the pictures of Kobe, Osaka and Tokyo similarly ring true. Other readers cite David Lynch - but the imagery is definitely Kar Wai Wong. The Japanese sensitivity may be breaking free of the corporate steam roller and we may see a new Chinese-wave - or he may just be a lone but powerful new voice.

8 of 8 people found this review helpful

Anthony

Bournemouth, United Kingdom

11/15/08

Overall

"Peculiar but entertaining"

This is the second Marukami novel i have read, the first being The Wind-Up Bird which needless to say had me hooked, and sent me back to the beginnings of his work.
Norwegian Wood is a story of the coming of age of a college boy and his encounters with a variety of girls and women. The narrative was beautiful throughout but was interspersed with frequent sexualy explicit language or behaviour particulalry from the female characters which was unexpected and quite shocking but written in such a way as to be an obvious and open language and behaviour of persons of that age-group.
I did not enjoy this as much as The Wind Up Bird but am keen to continue reading Murakami as the prose is so expressive and distinctly surreal. I like his work very much

4 of 4 people found this review helpful

C.

Edinburgh, United Kingdom

3/13/13

Overall

"Excellent"

John Chancer is an excellent reader of Murakami, to the point that i can't imagine him read anybody's else work. The novel is moving, funny and surprising in equal measure. I did not want it to end.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

Marcin

London, United Kingdom

12/18/11

Overall

"worth a download!"

There's something special about Murakami's books and this one is where it all started for me. I had read this beautiful story before and decided to try out the audiobook. I enjoyed it greatly even if the voices of the female characters sounded a bit awkward at times. Overall, a great book and a very good reader nonetheless.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

John

Milton Keynes, United Kingdom

8/27/11

Overall

"A beautifully sad conversation."

I found this book enthralling from the very start. It seems more personal than most novels and as I listened I felt as though I were listing to story of a lifelong friend whose past I had never known about rather than a character in a book.Surely this is the type of story telling that every writer aspires to.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

subangi+0412onepod

London, United Kingdom

4/12/11

Overall

"Awesome listen"

Awesome listen. Recommend this to all your friends. I enjoyed it very much. Great title. Good one for all users.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

subangi+0405reg

London, United Kingdom

4/5/11

Overall

"Amazing Cover"

Testing Review. Test Test Test. This is an amazing title. You ought to listen and learn. Recommend it to others as well.

2 of 3 people found this review helpful

James

St Albans, Herts, United Kingdom

5/3/10

Overall

"Wonderful"

My first audio book I purchased from Audible and what a wonderful listen it was. The narration is excellent giving every character their own well-deserved persona. This is a book to get lost in on sunny afternoons, while running or taking a bike ride as I often did. I can't compare this to any other Murakami novel as it's my first but as a book in it's own right it is an extremely rewarding listen.

3 of 4 people found this review helpful

Clare

RichmondUnited Kingdom

11/12/08

Overall

"An enjoyable journey, but not the best destination"

Having got totally hooked by Kafka on the Shore I felt compelled to dive straight into another Murakami listen. I couldn?t say that I enjoyed Norwegian Wood as much as Kafka, however there is something incredibly appealing and enchanting about his style that still meant I enjoyed this. It's basically a coming of age book with the main character being likened to Holden Caulfield by some although I personally wouldn?t go that far. I didn?t feel there was so much depth to this story and whilst what I love about Murakami is the fact you really have no idea where his stories are going unfortunately when this one ended although I know I enjoyed the journey I was still not entirely sure where it had taken me. So much so that I actually started it all over again to see if there was something I missed at the beginning. Unfortunately not, but that hasn?t deterred me from moving straight on to The Wind-up Bird Chronicle which 4 hours in I?m already finding to be closer to the depth and quality of Kafka. I can?t remember the last time I was this addicted to an author. One word of warning though if you?re easily offended then Norwegian Wood in particular has quite a bit more sexual content than some of his other novels and whilst I personally don?t think he does it in a particularly vulgar way, it could be off putting to someone of a delicate persuasion.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

yue

Stockton-on-tees, United Kingdom

4/14/13

Overall

"good"

nice audio, appropriate reading speed with clear sound. I have read the book already, the audio can substitute book

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

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